Modern thought was decentered by Marx, psychoanalysis, and Saussurean linguistics

Evidence

In the opening part of the chapter, Stuart situates the anti-essentialist sentiments of these arguments with reference to what he calls the “great decenterings” of modern thought. He traces the intellectual route through Marx’s critique of political economy and the psychoanalytical “de-throning of the conscious mind” to the revelations in Saussurean linguistics concerning the unconscious foundations of language. On the basis of that groundwork, he then further updates his argument with reference to feminist critiques of masculinism and postcolonial perspectives on Eurocentric conceptions of modernity as a specifically western episteme and relates these issues to the insights (and dangers) of the Derridean reading of “différance.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 147

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘great decenterings’ of modern thought as a foundational framework: Marx’s critique of political economy, psychoanalytic ‘de-throning of the conscious mind’, and Saussurean linguistics on the unconscious foundations of language.
• XREF: This decenterings genealogy is the standard toolkit that downstream critical theory (including Islamophobia critique of Orientalism) assumes — connects to the reader’s planned Foucault/psychoanalysis readings in this module. — connects to: Postwar French thought shifted from three Hs to three masters of suspicion — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 296; Fromm saw psychoanalysis as filling Marxism’s missing link between ideology and economic base. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 329